ON GRUZIA'S ORIGIN

The country of Georgia has many names. The Georgians call it Sakartvelo, the Turks call it Gurjistan, the Europeans call it Georgia, and the Ukrainians call it Gruzia. The toponym always seemed vague as to its origin, but now we can give a sound explication.

The starting point is the name of ancient Megrelia (Western Georgia) that used to be known as Egrisi. So, our task is to show how Egrisi transformed into Gruzia.

1. ეგრისი [egrisi]
2. Latin transliteration would be EGRISI.
3. The final -a is added to make it look like a country's name: EGRISIA.
4. The I may be written as Y for those two letters are interchangeable in Latin: EGRYSIA.
5. The starting E may be omitted similarly to the pair España-Spagna: GRYSIA.
6. And now we transliterate the name into Cyrillic, having read Y as [u], as it was done many times throughout history, and S as [z], since in the intervocal position in Latin language S sounds as Z: ГРУЗИЯ [gruzia].

ეგრისი --> ГРУЗИЯ